26 October 2008

The Santo Niño has many incarnations and "looks". Neighborhood tailors tend to go with cutesy things like basketball jerseys, while the more mainstream fancy, embroidered, shiny, and quite regal-garish selections are found in major trading spots all over the country:

21 October 2008

On a cold, damp day in San Francisco, I was sitting in a bus, hardcore fiending for some Philippine cacao. Thick, dark, not instant stuff, not scrimping on the bean. It was pretty understandable that I frantically jumped up and yanked the stop cord as I saw a sign outside a cafe that said "Champurrado! It's back!".

I had previously read that Mexicans made their champurrado with corn, instead of rice. I was a bit disheartened, therefore, to receive a cup filled with what is basically hot chocolate with masa harina (corn flour) and cinnamon mixed in. Or, from a corn-centric view, it is an atole or corn-flour beverage with chocolate mixed in.

Egads.

Of course, I grew up with Filipino champorado-- whole pieces of sticky rice, floating (suspended) in a goop of thick, dark, chocolate. More like, the best porridge in the world. I was expecting whole corn bits for texture. This is not to say that it wasn't good-- frothy and at least more dense than most Western cacao drinks-- but the name can mislead poor homesick Filipinos.

Street champorado.

Yesterday, I was walking the streets of Manila and came across a man pushing a cart with large vats of champorado and pansit. Many people congregated. I was interested in the chocolate stuff, as I always am!

Most folks opt for evaporated milk on.

Drowning in milk for this fellow.

Curiously enough, the co-existence of champurrado and champorado brings historical interactions alive. While champurrado had no doubt previously existed as atole de chocolate, the Philippines only obtained cacao during the galleon trade. Our own version may have been a Spanish-time invention, but who gave it the name?

Apparently, champurrar, vernacular Latin American for "mixing drinks", came from the Malay word tchampur or campur, meaning the same thing, or simply, "to add". Consider this a word that migrated into the Americas from Southeast Asia, and has gone as far as French Algeria (champoraux, a coffee and alcohol mixture).

This puzzle of great variations, but same names (and an additional factor of possible renaming from an atole to something specific), makes me think about galleon snippets. Boholano slaves in Acapulco and the current abundance of chocolate in Bohol. Our shared tool, the chocolate frother, there called molinillo, here, batirol, batidor, or chocolatera. And so on, and so forth.

What a species advantage it is-- to be delicious! The cacao needed only to hit a taste bud for humans to carry it across oceans and make it a part of their lives and desires.

16 October 2008

Certainly they are free of much of the stylish trendy BS in graphic design. Sign-makers have to prioritize getting a message out there, whilst moving. Through the use of color, font size, and even an occasional establishment's logo, with the constraint of medium (cheap paint or cut-out stickers), they get it done.

The signs are usually sold to drivers at some improvised stand along the route, or by word-of mouth among route-mates.

This one come in neon.

They come on some kind of thin plywood (recently, plastic). Mostly, they come with a suction for the glass, with a little hook, so once a driver is going the opposite way on his route, he will unhook the sign and usually flip it around.

13 October 2008

Something to write home about. A busy store called "Cheapy" along a Hong Kong shopping street showcases a video of a very expensive-looking pop concert. Everyone was in modified, metallic bird costumes and doing arching motions whilst dancing. Incredible!

09 October 2008

07 October 2008

Pearl shakes and milk tea joints are all over Macau and Hong Kong. We trawled a couple. I'm not sure if these are mushrooming recently now, just as Manila is seeing a frozen-yogurt construct-your-own-dessert wave.

I would never drink this sort of stuff in the Philippines, but the lure of novelty is a lure indeed.

05 October 2008

In China (and Chinatowns and Chinese territories), you will find, in health shops, expensive packets of birds' nests being sold. They are used to make soup that apparently balances the body's constitution.

Ronnie, our caretaker. Also a busyador (nest gatherer).

Seeing these in Macau and Hong Kong made me think of my recent trip to one major nest source, the El Nido group of islands in Palawan. The place had been visited by Chinese traders as early as the Sung Dynasty (mentioned in books more than one century BC!) owing to the abundance of resources such as the small bowl-like formations of hardened swiftlet spit found in the caves.

This paradise was called Pa-Lao-Yu or "Land of Beautiful Harbors" by the Chinese, and named El Nido or "the nest" by the Spanish.

El Nido cliffs.

Among these jagged and beautiful limestone cliffs and mountains of El Nido are caves where bats and swiftlets or balinsasayaw abound. There are views that nest collection is endangering the birds. People often to collect beyond the prescribed period. as the thing commands exorbitant prices on the market. Creating any kind of shelter or useful thing out of bodily excretions is indeed a talent, which we shouldn't ever lose to commerce.Here are some, on a spinning plate. That really cracked me up.

04 October 2008

I was watching some Chinese programming in my room and saw a (subtitled) news segment about the resurgence of medicinal soup. For any affliction you have-- too much heat, a sluggish liver, qi stagnation, lackluster hair-- there exists a corresponding soup. Many are cooked over a few hours and double as some kind of therapeutic tea.

With offerings going way beyond just bovine balls for virility, this is the savory soup version of the ancient adage: "Just a spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down, in the most delightful way."

Furthermore, office people are taking up arms and demanding for healthier food despite their stuckness in their buildings. In Hong Kong, where the LOHAS segment is expanding just as it is worldwide, good money is being made on pre-ordered medicinal soup, delivered to offices everyday.

Reminds me of the Goolai phenomenon in Manila, except it's food made using traditional and native ingredients.